This would mean that, in some instances, the ghosts might have met before (and could hope to meet up the following year).
The ghosts can be seen as solid forms, not as diaphanous spectres.
As well as this, they have decided that because it’s Christmas Eve – and anything can happen at Christmas – people who see the ghosts (presumably dressed in the clothes of their time) won’t perceive them to be unusual.
As they discuss this last point, Jo wonders what James would say if he could see her now? She is sure he would dismiss it all as nonsense. A ridiculous preoccupation – rather like her childish ‘stationery habit’. Well, her ‘stationery habit’ was now helping her to improve the running of her uncle’s shop. And this? Jo hasn’t felt so relaxed in ages, and she smiles at the two very different figures sitting beside her.
She is not just bound to her family and friends in the North-East any more; she has real friends in London too. Home has always been in the North, but sitting in this London pub with Ruth and Malcolm, Jo feels a tug of something close to an ache when she thinks of leaving them. She pushes the thought away, for once happy to settle into her limbo.
Ruth is still chatting about the ghosts when Malcolm relapses into silence. He looks sad, and Jo is reminded of other times when she has felt anxious about him. Ruth’s words trail off, and both women watch him as he fiddles with one of the beer mats on the table.
Looking up, he turns from one to the other and says, ‘Would you mind me asking you both something?’
‘Ask away,’ Ruth encourages, and Jo nods.
‘Do you believe in ghosts?’
‘What, apart from the Holy Ghost?’ Ruth replies, and Malcolm gives her a shadow of a smile.
‘I don’t think I do,’ Ruth says, more seriously. And then she asks the question that had sprung into Jo’s mind. ‘Do you, Malcolm?’
He stares at Ruth for some moments then, patting the table with both hands says, ‘I think it is only fair that I tell you and Joanne a bit more about how I came up with the idea for my book.’ He gazes at a point above their heads.
Ruth and Jo glance at each other and wait in silence. Jo’s thoughts return to the time that Malcolm first told them about his book, and how hard he appeared to find it to tell them where the idea came from. She had thought then that there was something he wasn’t telling them.
‘I sometimes feel like such a foolish old man,’ Malcolm starts, shaking his head. ‘My mother was a wonderful woman, and we were very close, especially after my father and brother’s death. She understood me like nobodyelse ever has.’ He pauses. ‘Well, maybe one other very dear person.’ He stops talking, and Jo wonders if they should say something, but after a few seconds, Malcolm picks up the thread. ‘Yes, she was a very special woman, and it is true to say that I never felt I measured up to her. My goodness, when I think of what she had done with her life. And what had I done?’ Malcolm opens his hands outwards, palms empty.
Jo is about to say something to try to reassure him, when he turns his whole body towards Ruth. ‘Reverend Ruth, you once said that loss didn’t always get easier with time. My dear, you are quite right.’ He nods his head vigorously. ‘It must be about two years ago now that I found, well, that life without my mother felt barely worth living. And, I know, I know, that I should have been able to cope; it was the natural order of things, she was a very old woman when she died, but oh, how I missed her.’
Jo can see the sadness etched into his face, just like she had when she’d watched him looking at photographs of his mother.
‘Again, I feel so foolish confessing to this …’
Ruth reaches out and strokes one of Malcolm’s hands. ‘There is nothing shameful about loving another human being and missing them,’ she says, gently.
He sighs and continues, ‘I told myself I should have got over her loss, but all I really felt was a desperate loneliness. It was worse than when my father and brother died, and I felt guilty about that, too, because they had died so young and she had lived to a ripe old age. But I missed her terribly. I tried to busy myself with some research into Highgate Cemetery, but …’ Again he holds his hands out, palms empty.
‘And the ghosts?’ Ruth asks, and Jo remembers where this conversation had started: Malcolm’s question,Do you believe in ghosts?
‘Ah, the ghosts, or rather a ghost.’ Malcolm’s tone suddenly becomes earnest. ‘Now, I am not for a moment saying that I saw a ghost, but I can’t help feeling that there was an occasion when my mother … reached out to me. You will no doubt think me even more of a decrepit and senile old man.’
Jo is certainly not thinking this. ‘What happened?’ she asks.
‘I was in the cemetery. It was last winter, a cold afternoon that turned into a bitter night.’ Malcolm glances towards one of the windows in the pub, which is now dark, apart from the glow of streetlights that look like baubles suspended across the panes. ‘I was sitting in a quiet part of the cemetery; I often found myself there, thinking about my life. But on that evening, a feeling of desolation burrowed into the heart of me. I crept in behind a large monument so that nobody could see me, and just sat on the cold earth, hidden from the world.’ Malcolm shakes his head very slightly, and tries to smile. ‘I have been hiding from the world most of my life. A man in grey.’
Jo thinks for an instance of purple and orange slippers embroidered with golden birds.
Malcolm continues. ‘I could see no possible reason for going on. I wanted to die. It wasn’t a big decision; in fact, it hardly seemed to matter, but I thought if I just sat there long enough, the cold and the night would take me.’
Ruth reaches out and holds Malcolm’s hand. ‘I understand that, Malcolm. People often think suicide is a massive decision, which of course, in its way, it is. But when someone is in the depths of despair, it can seem as irrelevant a choice as, well, shall I go to the shops or not.’
‘Yes, yes,’ Malcolm says, urgently, and Jo is aware of how much the small, bird-like woman beside her will have seen in her life. And also that it is typical of her new friend that she called it by what it was: a suicide attempt.
‘What happened, Malcolm?’ Jo asks, reaching out and taking his other hand.
‘Well, I sat there. I even took my coat off, to speed things along. I heard the church clock strike one, and then I remember hearing it strike four. Maybe I had slept. I was beyond cold by then, feeling rather numb and light-headed. I particularly remember the silence. I felt isolated from the city beyond the cemetery walls, and I suppose no longer really part of life. I thought it couldn’t be much longer, and that if I fell asleep again I wouldn’t wake up.’ When Jo makes a small noise of distress, he squeezes her hand. ‘That was when a fox walked round the edge of the gravestone next to me. It stopped in its tracks and just stood and stared at me.’
Ah, the foxes.Jo remembers Malcolm’s mention of them when he related the tale of the Christmas Eve animals.
